The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
04.15.2014 | Baseball
Quotes from head coach Augie Garrido
Head coach Augie Garrido
On the victory tonight: It had kind of a strange feeling to me, it seemed almost like a minor league professional game. There wasn't a whole lot of energy, but there were a heck of a lot of really good plays. I think we captured the momentum with the pitching, oddly enough, we had 10 runs, but I think Chad Hollingsworth came in the game and turned the game around. He came in a difficult situation and he pitched his way out of it, he has been brilliant the last three times he has walked out there. Culbreth was right behind him with the same kind of stuff. We have added two more [reliable] pitchers with those two, and with Cooper and Curtiss, I think we are pretty well set in terms of a staff that can go out there.
On the state of the team currently: I think they are competing well, I think they have a spirit about them and an energy about them, it is called confidence. They are sticking to the fundamentals of the game, and they are sticking to the code. The code is we are trying to get better every game, not just win the game,but try and get better every game. We are not good enough to win a National Championship yet, we left some runs on the table tonight that is always a part of it, but we are getting there. Everyday we are getting a little bit better one player at a time.
The commitment to team first is kind of tough when all of your life you have worried about your own batting average and ERA, but we are getting more and more people making the contributions the team needs on a daily basis. You see the [innings] are getting extended, we are getting more runs than we were at the beginning of the season. Tommy Nicholson is doing a great job with the offense in getting them to believe in their swing and trust their swing. They are separating balls they can hit from balls they can't hit pretty well, and that was one of the offensive weapons tonight, taking the walks and taking advantage of what the defense was giving them. Ben [Johnson] had a really good night offensively obviously, but I think the whole team [played well]. When you get three runs instead of one in an inning, it is a big difference, and that seems to be the case now, we are able to get three runs in innings where we had been getting one run and the rally would fall apart. I think we are growing.
On if the team learned their lesson from last Tuesday's loss against Rice: I do. I think we won the Friday game at Oklahoma because of the Rice game, I really do. We got paralyzed in the Rice game when they had the five run inning, and we had some players that were over aggressive and some players that were passive for fear of losing the game. They recognized that and made a great adjustment in the Oklahoma game where we got behind.
I think Parker French deserves an awful lot of credit. it doesn't appear that way numerically, but he had a six run inning in which almost every player on the field contributed to [Oklahoma's] scoring, and the next inning he got three outs three up three down, that's hard to do. Then he gave up two [runs] later on putting them ahead, and he came out and got three outs. He extended his innings he pitched, gave us a better bullpen for the rest of the series, and made more contributions than the ERA might reveal … It was really was a pretty heroic thing he did there, and it put us in a good position for this week.
On how important it was to see Chad Hollingsworth and Ty Culbreth pitch well again tonight: It is extremely important because in your regional championships if you go into the loser's bracket in the beginning, you are going to have the hardest time getting out of that. It is the most number of pitchers you will every use at any time during the season … You have to build a pitching staff for one weekend, but [our guys] being ready for that is super, because most pitching staffs are not ready for that.
On the patience Mark Payton showed tonight at the plate drawing four walks: That's leadership man. That is absolutely unselfish, doing what the pitch is telling him he has to do for the good of the team. That is our motto, and living up to that motto is not easy, it's 32 guys walking into the locker room putting on burnt orange and doing whatever it takes, in the role they have, to help the team win the game. It isn't about your batting average, it isn't about your ERA, it isn't about your personal gain, it isn't about all these things it can be about. We [understand] all of that.
